


Room for Friction

by lyrithim



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Fluff, M/M, Roommates, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-02 05:55:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11503140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyrithim/pseuds/lyrithim
Summary: Or, a non-comprehensive list of things Dex and Nursey learned to compromise on while living with each other.





	Room for Friction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crystalized](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crystalized/gifts).



> I tried to incorporate most of the prompt and added one of my own segments. This was enormous fun to write (also waow zero angst what is this). Thanks to [tinseltowncloud](http://tinseltowncloud.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr for the prompt. <3  
> Also, I accidentally stumbled upon the actual canon history of the Haus [here](http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/post/59700714826) after I wrote one of the sections below, but I liked the passage too much to change it so just an fyi for the real hardcore OMGCP nerds out there.

  1. Alarms



Derek was not a morning person.

To be more precise, he had no great appreciation for what _Will_ considers “mornings.”

He had known that Will was the sort of person who slept before eleven every day and then woke up at five o’clock in the morning, of course. In their sophomore year, he and Chowder would often sneak into Will’s dorm building to fetch Will for their usual round of LAX bro pranking, only to find Will curled up in a corner while his roommate—an electrical engineering major—glared like he wanted to throttle them with a robotic hand.

Now, fresh into the start of their third year, Derek’s mistake was that he assumed Will would adapt to life in a frat house: one of general disorder, held together by strange traditions and too many parties. What he forgot to take into consideration was Will’s extreme stubbornness in all things, including sleeping through Derek’s loudest music past midnight and waking up before most CS majors go to sleep. When Derek told him this break in routine was disturbing Derek’s poetry writing, Will had explained that his uncle drilled it into him when Will worked on his boat all those summers ago. He couldn’t help it. But Derek knew—Derek _knew_ Will was just messing with him.

Derek had thought he could win this war of attrition by retaliating with an entire stock of pranks he had planned over the summer—highlights including an inflatable lobster Derek had hidden beneath his mattress—but when he was woken up at five a.m. to Katy Perry’s “Roar” for the eighth time, he had enough.

He rolled to the outer edge of his mattress as Will climbed down the ladder of their bunk bed.

“Dex,” he said.

“Hey,” Will said, cheerful—God, why was Will only cheerful pre-dawn? Was he some sort of psychic vampire, preying on the misery of sleep-deprived roommates? “I didn’t know you got up this early too.”

He was still smiling, that bastard.

“Come ’ere,” Derek murmured.

“What?”

“Need to tell you something,” Derek said, slightly louder this time.

“Really?” Will said, coming to Derek’s side. “Is it that you want to move out? Because, you know, I’d be more than happy to—”

Will, in his hubris, made the fatal mistake of extending his head into Derek’s bunk. And Derek, with the reflexes of a Division I ice hockey defenseman, rolled over and sprang on him.

The eventual end result was Will spread out across Derek’s bedsheets, his four limbs flailing uselessly by his sides as Derek locked his own arms and legs around Will’s torsos. It was quite undignified, for both of them, but especially for Derek. If anyone walked in, Derek’s image as the chillest of all bros would be forever ruined.

Then again, no one was up at _five o’clock in the morning_.

“You and me, bro,” Derek said, “we’re going to sleep together.”

Will was still too busy trying to escape to take a crack at _that_.

“Nurse, really?” he said, as he twisted and turned. Derek shifted side-to-side with it. It was a little like being rocked to sleep. “Goddammit! You can’t just—trap me here.”

Derek looked up from where his head was laid across Will’s chest and tried to telegraph murder.

“Chillax,” Derek commanded, because he had no chill left, “and go to sleep. I know you’ve got nothing till practice at ten. Go. To. Sleep.”

Will gave up eventually, and the looseness in Will’s muscles was a wonderful thing. He made an extremely comfortable pillow now: he smelled nice, and he was warm, and also soft despite all the muscles that should have made it harder for Derek to snuggle up against—

Derek woke up three hours later. Will was still beneath him. Derek was suddenly aware that both of them slept with only boxers on, and he felt the side of Will’s bare stomach pressed against his upper thigh.

Derek sat up and almost bumped his head against the top bunk. Will stared up, his arms loose by his head, his hair a mess—

“Good nap?” Will asked, his eyebrows arched. But he was blushing too, so he had no reason to feel superior.

“Fine,” Derek said, running his fingers through his hair. He had gone for “smooth and composed” and instead hit “voice-cracking teenage boy.” He cleared his throat. “Yours?”

“I,” and Will cleared his throat too. He sat up and looked away. “Yep.”

“I’m getting breakfast,” Derek said. “Downstairs.”

“Yep. I’ll—change up. Here.”

“Chill,” Derek said. Then he disentangled himself from his best friend while trying to minimize their points of physical contact. It didn’t work too well.

“Yep,” Will repeated, an octave higher.

Derek pulled on some pants and a shirt and fast-walked the hell out of there. As he reached the staircase though, he came to some of his senses and shouted, “Wake up at a reasonable time, Poindexter!”

“Shut up,” was the call back.

They reached a compromise a week later, in which Will would release that godawful alarm at six-thirty each morning, and Derek would refrain from pulling Will into impromptu morning naps in their lower bunk.

 

  1. Music



Because Dex was a CS major, his first midterm came at three weeks into the semester. Nursey’s first ten-page paper coincided exactly with Dex’s study time.

The Haus, being a frat house, had never been the ideal study space. But Dex couldn’t study unless he and dozens of practice tests were sprawled over his bed, and he always got distracted by the sneezing and coughing that echoed in the quiet spaces of the library anyway. It meant, then, studying with Nursey in his room.

Nursey had a routine when he wrote essays in which he would blast the music as loud as possible to “drown out the critics in my head” and type at blurring speed. Usually he would only play the music into his headphones, so Dex would only have the comforting noise of clattering keyboards as his background to studying. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the singing.

It started off as humming. The tune was from songs Dex rarely could recognize unless they were from ATCQ or if Nursey introduced him to them at a later time, because Nursey, a hipster, was proud that his music tastes to be as obscure as possible. Nursey had a steady grasp of pitch and a warm, expansive voice. A few bars of humming and Dex’s mind would be irresistibly drawn to Nursey’s voice for a good half an hour before he realized how far his train of thought had deviated from machine learning, knowledge discovering, and data mining techniques. It was frustrating.

A couple of days later, Nursey began to sing.

Dex had heard Nursey sing after practices and games in the shower; he and Bitty would sometimes duet to Beyoncé across stalls, to thunderous applause. Occasionally on roadies too. Most of the time, though, Nursey mixed in words in his humming—as though absentmindedly trying to memorize them—instead of delivering full, VMA-ready performances like Bitty did in mornings.

In this third week, Nursey had started off that way, but pretty soon Dex began to hear whole phrases, then whole sentences, whole stanzas, and eventually the whole song. It was too distracting by this point; Dex had been trying to read the same sentence for the past fifteen minutes because he would always be distracted by a particularly lyrical line in the song. So he clutched onto his pillow—his weapon of choice for many of their battles already—and dipped his head down from the top bunk to spy on Nursey.

Nursey didn’t seem to notice he was doing anything unusual. His eyes were scanning Eliot’s _Adam Bede_ at alarming speed, and his right hand seemingly had a mind of its own as he scribbled on a yellow legal pad on his pillow. But his shoulders didn’t hold the usual tenseness, and his head was bobbing a little to the beat, the way he did in Haus parties when he was in a particularly good state. And Dex began to let himself listen.

The song he sang was a love song, about youth and lust and the untainted certainty of teenaged romances. It had the beat of an R&B song, but the sway of hip-hop; might be both, might be neither, might be a whole new genre of music that ninety-percent of Americans had never heard yet, it was just that hipster.  Dex wanted to know, but he was more caught up by the swell of Nursey’s voice, the fullness and deepness of it, with the teasing ease Nursey had navigating the contours of the melody. Dex wanted to sit by his side, maybe strum that dumb guitar he had practiced on for a few years in high school, and lean his head against Nursey’s shoulder and _listen_ —

“Can I study with you at your room this week?” Dex asked Chowder the day after.

“Sure,” Chowder said easily. Then he asked, concerned, “Did something happen with your place?”

“No, no. Nursey just tends to sing when he’s stressed out, I think.”

“He’s too loud?”

“No,” Dex said, feeling himself blush. “No, it’s just—it’s just distracting, that’s all.”

 

  1. Sexile



Derek couldn’t quite believe it at first. But after looking at the sock hanging precariously over the doorknob, then checking his own phone, he had to.

Chowder opened his door. “Hey, Nursey—”

“Yo, C,” Derek said. “I’ve been sexiled.”

“Oh.” Chowder tilted his head quizzically, then he realized something. “ _Oh_. I’m so sorry, Nursey! Come in, take a seat. I’m going to—I’m going to get you some tea, okay? Bitty always says you give people tea in situations like this.”

Derek wanted to ask him what he meant by “situations like this,” but by then Chowder had already scurried down the stairs.

A few minutes later, they were both holding piping hot tea. The tea did help a lot, especially since it was the middle of October now, just as the seasons were changing. Derek had underdressed that morning and endured a chilly trek back to the Haus, during which he had looked forward to the warm stretch of his bed, maybe stealing a couple of Will’s blankets as well, even better if Will was there to sputter indignantly at him for it—

“Are you sure?” Chowder was asking, serious. “About Dex? I mean, maybe the sock was just—”

Derek passed Chowder his phone. He watched Chowder read Will’s text to him: _Having the girl over. Might finally get lucky this time. Don’t distract us unless it’s an emergency._

“Oh,” Chowder said sadly.

“I mean,” Derek began. “Dude, I don’t even care, but like, I’m surprised, that’s all.”

“Yeah.”

“This came out of the left field, you know? I mean, yeah, I’m happy our best friend’s finally getting’ some, exploring his youth, whatevs. But I always took him for a two-year-courtship-promise-ring kinda guy, you get me?”

“I thought so too!” Chowder said. “Two years! Exactly!”

“Probably really nervous for his first time with you,” Derek added. “Takes you out on a nice restaurant first—anything but lobster, probably steak or something. Blushing all the time. Rose petals over the covers, champagne on the dresser. Probably really awkward in bed too, but adorable, and eager to please, you know?”

“Um.”

“I’m just saying, I read my best friend wrong,” Derek said, “and that’s kinda weird, you know? I mean, he doesn’t even really like talking about girls. Like, where did this person even come from?”

“Me and Cait have been planning so many things the four of us can do together,” Chowder said, mournful. “So many hiking trips! And brunches! Not that we don’t do brunches _now_.”

“It’s a school night too!” Derek suddenly remembered. “He didn’t even wait till—Saturday, or something. He just— _went_ for it.”

“It is!” Chowder said. “I feel like I don’t even know him!”

“Well,” Derek said, blinking at him. “That might be going a bit far.”

“No it’s not,” Chowder said, suddenly fierce. “You don’t understand, Nursey. Me and Cait have been waiting so long for you guys. I mean, to be honest I didn’t expect this to come from him. The faces he made when he saw you at Keagster last year! And when you kept on going on about that guy in your Eighteenth Century Lit class? He looked like he wanted to throw a copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ at someone—”

“That’s the wrong century,” Derek told him. “What’d you mean, though, about how he looked? I don’t remember ever seeing him—”

The door opened.

Will’s head popped in. He looked around then zeroed in on him and Chowder.

“Hey,” he said, then his eyebrows knitted together. “What’s with that expression?” He sighed. “Did the LAX bros kidnap Tango again?”

“Uh, no, Ford was there to stop them this time,” Chowder said.

“I’m beginning to think Whiskey’s giving them a list of when and where to target him,” Will muttered.

Derek finally spoke up. “Don’t you have to attend to your,” he cleared his throat, “girl?”

“What?”

“If it didn’t last long, it usually wasn’t good for them,” Derek told him.

Will’s mouth was slightly parted, like he didn’t know what to say next, but whatever it was, it was going to be spoken in outrage.

Then a feminine voice said, “Hey, William, did you find the hard drive?”

Will leaned back out of sight to shout, “Yeah, I did. I’m just talking to my housemates real quick.” Then he walked into the room, grabbed the USB resting at the corner of the table, and pointed it at Derek. “Her name is Isabel and she’s my _project partner_. Like I _told_ you this _morning_.” To Chowder, he asked, “It’s cool if I take this back?”

“Yeah,” Chowder said, like he was trying to not burst into giggles. “Yeah, I’m done with it.”

“Thanks. We just finished the project—thank god.” Then, back at Derek, he added, “Get your head out the gutter. I’m not going to—” He made an incomprehensible noise. “On a school night!” he added. Then he left.

Derek turned to Chowder. “Alright, that was— Alright.”

Chowder laughed. “Whew, that was—a relief.”

“Which reminds me,” Derek said. “What you said earlier about Dex—”

“Nope.” Chowder pushed Derek out the room. “You should go back now that they’re done. I’ll clean up here!” As the door slammed shut for the last time, Derek heard Chowder sigh with a clink of mugs. “That was close.”

 

  1. Shower Schedule



The Haus was a 1959 two-story ranch-style work of architecture, built during the postwar population boom as somewhat well-to-do Bostonians in their thirties moved to suburbs and smaller cities to participate in the middle-class domesticities that were to come in the Sixties. The Haus in its first generation sheltered a young suburban couple and their three children, before the university bought it and the surrounding neighborhood twenty-four years later with an even more accelerated campus population expansion. It had since then housed college students in and out of sororities and fraternities and, in this current timeline, the men’s hockey team, carrying with it the prints and scars of youthful joy and carelessness.

That was all to say, the plumbing system in the Haus was old as fuck and hadn’t experienced major renovations in over thirty years.

Besides being generally gross starting three days after the bathroom was cleaned, the showers themselves refused to output hot water about thirty minutes in, then refused to output water in another ten minutes. Nowhere else, then, did the Samwell Men’s Hockey team’s hierarchy of power manifest than in the Haus showering schedules. It was as follows: in the morning, Bitty (with his choice rendition of a Beyoncé song), Chowder (because he was Bitty’s favorite), then Dex; at night, Ollie (or Wicks), Wicks (or Ollie), then Nursey. To miss the assigned shower slot was to carry the stink that accompanied a student athlete all the way past practice, to the shower stalls at Faber that would be filled with the rest of their teammates whipping wet towels at each other and making a lot of dick jokes. And Dex wasn’t _obsessed_ with keeping his hair On Point like Nursey and Ollie (or Wicks) was, but those after-practice showers encouraged a quick rinse-and-dry than anything else.

And therein lied his current dilemma.

“Switch slots with me for a day,” Dex told Nursey.

Nursey placed his bowl of Coco Puffs on the table, paused, and said, “Nah.”

As Nursey slipped into his seat, Dex took a deep breath in, let it out, and said, “Please.”

“Bro,” Nursey said, delicately dipping a spoon into his bowl and—sipped at it, “you overwork yourself, you reap the results.”

Dex sighed. “I had to submit a project—”

“That you said was finished two days ago.”

“I had to check—”

“Mm-hmm,” Nursey said, then sipped at another spoonful of milk. “Dude, I don’t really care if you oversleep or not, but what I do care about? Hot water. It ran out halfway through yesterday when—when Ollie and Wicks took too long, and bro, I’m going to need that hot shower today.”

“I don’t need the water to be hot,” Dex said, realizing there was another path in. “If you just let me use it after you and give me enough time to shower before that thing starts spitting pebbles at me, that’s all I’m asking.”

Pebbles did rain down from the Haus showerhead on move-in day. Bitty had recorded it and uploaded the video to YouTube under the sensational title “Y’all asked me about the Haus. This is it.” It had since then remained in his top twenty most popular videos.

“Hmm.” Nursey was chewing as he thumbed open a book of poetry.

“Please,” Dex repeated, getting desperate. “I can’t go into my interview tomorrow smelling like—like a hockey player.”

“Shower in the morning.”

“I have to get to Boston by nine.”

“Break into Faber tonight.”

Dex raised a challenging eyebrow. “If you help me.”

Nursey looked at Dex and quirked up one side of his lips. “What will you give me?”

“I’ll—”

“Guys,” Whiskey said as he and Tango claimed their seats, “just shower together. Problem solved.”

Dex flushed, and—he glanced across the table—so did Nursey.

Nursey did end up promising to cut his shower time in half so Dex at least stood a chance at showering with water, and that night, as soon as Nursey exited the bathroom, Dex charged into the steam and, with military speed, stripped and stepped into the tub. The water was still tepid when he turned it on: a miracle.

He was in and out so fast that, when he reentered his room, Nursey was still changing. At the same time, Dex realized that, in his habit, he had only a towel by his waist.

They made eye contact, and a thick layer of awkwardness descended.

Dex coughed and tried to edge casually toward the dresser to retrieve a pair of boxers. Then Nursey—Nursey, of all people, made the situation more awkward by asking, “So. You usually—change back here in the mornings?”

“Uh. Yeah.”

Nursey nodded. “Chill.” Then he plucked his own boxer off the ground.

The two of them began their own little dance in opposite corners of the room, trying to get into their clothes under the covers of their (very small) towels. It shouldn’t be this bad. They changed in front of each other every day in Faber—they really had nothing to hide in front of each other—but there was, somehow. Dex continued his shuffling.

At some point, he thought he saw Nursey’s eyes glancing over, saw him biting down his lips. But he must have imagined it—projected what he accidentally caught himself doing to him.

Dex needed another cold shower.

 

  1. Injury



Derek suffered a bad check in their home game against Boston College right after Thanksgiving, bad enough that he was left sprawled on the ice for a few minutes before the medics got him on a stretcher and lifted him away. They did end up winning the game, but the sprain was serious enough that he would be out of commission for four weeks.

When he was wrapped in gauzes and delivered back to the Haus with a pair of crutches, the team flew to him in a flutter of concerns and violent curses, and Derek did love them for it. They crowded him like baby chicks until Bitty, with Chowder’s help, clucked at them to disperse and go back to their dorms, because it was past three in the morning, and whoever didn’t leave in twenty minutes would be skating suicides the next day—captain’s orders. When they were gone, Derek looked around.

“Where’s Dex?” he asked, trying not to sound too disappointed.

Bitty smiled. “Well—”

“Here,” came the curt voice, and Will was stalking out of the kitchen as he tore off an apron. He shoved a steaming bowl of soap into one of Derek’s hands and placed a bag of peas—the label peeking through a carefully wrapped and pinned towel—over his ankle. “Ice.”

“And this?” Derek asked, lifting up the bowl. He tried—he really did—not to grin too broadly, but by the looks of Will’s red face, he had failed.

“It’s beef broth,” Will said. “Collagen. It’s good for your—sprain.”

“Thanks, dude,” Derek said, and tried not to press on the fact that the broth probably took hours to make, which meant that Will had probably started boiling the bone as soon as he returned to the Haus. “I mean it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Will said, sitting on the other side of the sofa Derek was laid across.

At this point, Bitty coughed markedly and steered Chowder up the stairs, muttering something beneath his breath. At the stairs, he called back, “Don’t stay up too late, boys!” while Chowder sent Derek a knowing look. Whatever. So his captain and best friend both knew about his enormous crush on William J. Poindexter. Derek, basked in the glory that was Will’s beef broth, didn’t care at the moment.

Derek, for his part, sipped his broth as slowly as he could. Will didn’t seem to mind; he was tracing circles around Derek’s cast slowly, absentmindedly, until he realized what he was doing and withdrew his hand, flushing all the while. Derek surveyed him.

“You done?” Will asked, after Derek paused a bit too long.

Derek wasn’t done. But instead of telling him that, he said, “I’m tired.” He batted his eyelashes when Will looked at him. “Feed me?”

He had been certain that Will would refuse. Instead, Will looked at him, then he squatted by his side, took his bowl, and held up a spoon.

“Open,” Will said irritably.

Derek grinned at him, then obliged. The broth tasted better when fed to him, and he told Will so. Will didn’t say anything in particular, but flushed more and told him to open his mouth again.

There would be nothing chill about chilling on the bench while the rest of the team practiced for the next game, but for now, Derek was more than content. He suddenly remembered the moment where he had collapsed against the acrylic viewing boards, then slid to the burning cold ice at his feet. More than his own pain, he had looked at Will’s face—his paper-white face—and sought to comfort him with a smile when Will skated to his side. But of course Will hadn’t bought it.

Thusly they continued, until the bowl was emptied. After Will placed the dishes in the sink, and the frozen peas softened into soggy peas beneath Derek’s grip, there was no more excuse for Derek to stay. So Derek said, “I think I should be heading upstairs now.”

And Will said, “Nope.”

“Nope?”

With that, Will reached beneath Derek’s back and hoisted him up. Into the air. Into Will’s arms. Derek’s mind shorted out trying to find a way to remain chill in this situation.

“I’m going to carry you back, into our room,” Will said, a little redundantly. Derek was too focused on Will’s veined biceps to absorb much outside information. “It’s not good if you move your ankle. Which you know.”

“Mm-hm.”

“You’ll owe me one,” Will said, apparently not used to Derek’s lack of protest. Derek really couldn’t manage one at the moment, to be perfectly honest.

“I’d think,” he said instead, “you rather deserve a favor at this point, wouldn’t you?”

Will’s pink flush crept all the way down to his forearms, this time. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Whatever you want,” Derek said lightly.

“What I want,” Will said, as they reached the top of the stairs, “is for you to get back on your feet so we can kick Darthmouth’s ass—get back at them for last year.”

“I’ll try my best,” Derek told him. “I know you’re useless on the ice without me.”

Will rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything else. He was finally smiling.

 

  1. Crushes



Ever since Dex came out to the team a couple of weeks ago, something changed between him and Nursey. He couldn’t put a finger on it. It was shortened eye contact, jokes gone offbeat, teasing that didn’t come as fiercely, the lack of physical touch. Dex didn’t like to think about it, and to talk about it with Chowder would make it too real, so he didn’t do that either.

It was surprising, then, to find a text from Nursey in the middle of a Friday lecture that said, _wanna get dinner tonite?_

He considered it, then replied:

 **Me**  
Yeah. Annie’s?

 **Your Jackass Roommate**  
noo. i was thinking of a place in boston

 _Boston_? Dex was about to type back a long string of question marks, but then Nursey sent over a link to a Yelp page, and—hm. Alright.

 **Your Jackass Roommate**  
we cn watch a movie or smthg after

 **Me**  
I’m down

 **Me**  
Did you ask Chowder yet?

And here was a longer pause before the next text came:

 **Your Jackass Roommate**  
no i was hoping its just us 2

 **Your Jackass Roommate**  
i mean hes got somthing w cait

 **Your Jackass Roommate  
** so u kno

Chowder did mention something about leaving him and Nursey alone for the evening, come to think of it. So Dex shrugged and texted back an agreement. They arranged the time and place to take the shuttle to Boston, and it was done.

The trip to Boston was—strange, especially on Nursey’s part. The word “chill”—which had long been Dex’s barometer on how decidedly not chill Nursey was at a given moment—was uttered no fewer than thirty-seven times over the course of the hour. He didn’t rise to most of Dex’s more clever insults, just looked at him blankly until he understood what Dex was saying, then laughing in three beats: _Ha, ha, ha_. It was a terrifyingly good impression of Jack. His mind was a mile away, and when Dex tried to ask him about it, he started talking about the Falconers’ game against the Schooners last week—every single time.

At Boston, too, their luck was rotten. The diner Nursey had picked was, as it turned out, _incredibly_ popular, and the line for it stretched around the block. They waited for half an hour before settling on buying overpriced clam chowder a few streets away. Nursey remained unresponsive to the Chowder jokes Dex tried to make. The closest theater in the area sold out tickets for _Hacksaw Ridge_ until showings past eleven, and it seemed as though the same would be true for other theaters close by. By then Dex was ready to call this trip a bust, maybe grab a hot chocolate for the shuttle back to Samwell, but Nursey kept frantically—frantically for him—checking his phone for anything else they could sight-see or visit in Boston, even though the two of them and Chowder would often come every other week. Dex didn’t understand until they passed a florist’s and caught Nursey look at a bouquet of roses.

An idea came. The idea connected with the millions of things that Dex had found bewildering, upsetting, and out of the ordinary over the last few weeks, and it became a theory, a theory that was so wonderful and surprising that it tumbled out of Dex’s lips before it was tested by judgment:

“Is this a date?” Dex asked.

They were at the wharf now, rich men’s yachts bobbing by the docks next to them, the water flooded with yellow light. Nursey—who had been walking a few steps ahead, his hands pocketed in his jeans to create an illusion of casualness, despite the tense outlines of his shoulders—looked back. The refracted lights from the sea marked smooth, wobbling lines across his face and lit up the gray of his irises.

Then his shoulders slumped. And he asked, “If it was, it’d be a pretty shitty first date, wouldn’t it?”

 _First date_ , Dex thought.

Nursey turned fully toward him, and the guilty look in his eyes was gone, replaced by a seriousness Nursey rarely showed to others.

“If you want it to be a date, it is,” Nursey said. “If not—then it wasn’t. I—” As he swallowed, his Adam’s apple moved up then down. “I’m really into you, Poindexter. Like. Romantically. I was—trying to find a good way to tell you, but—” he laughed, a little self-deprecating, “—it didn’t work out.” He nodded. “I just wanted you to know that.”

Dex stood fully frozen in the Boston winter for a good five seconds before he marched forward and wound his hands into Nursey’s.

“Fuck, Nurse,” he said. “You’re such an idiot. Of course I like you too.” There was no change in Nursey’s expression, but his grip tightened. “I’ve liked you—forever.”

Now Nursey’s entire face lit up. “Really?”

Dex could offer no resistance to that, but he tried anyway. “You could’ve just asked, instead of all—all this.”

“Blame that on Chowder—he was adamant that I bring you to a nice place for dinner, wine and dine you.”

Dex sighed and tipped his forehead onto Nursey’s left shoulder. “He meddles way too much in our love lives.”

“Hey,” Nursey said, and it was the tone in his voice that made Dex look up, that shift in pitch once again. “Can I—kiss you, right now?”

Dex nodded. “Of course,” he breathed.

And so he did.

 

     6 1/2. Arguments

“That looks like you,” Nursey said, pointing at a lobster.

“Fuck you.”

The lobster scuttled a few inches above the floor of the fisherman’s aquarium, then sank back down. Nursey laughed and snuggled closer to Dex, and Dex rested his cheek on top of Nursey’s head.

“That’s you,” Dex said, nodding at an octopus.

“How so?”

“Second week of school? You pulled me in and wouldn’t me go?”

“Oh yeah.” Nursey grinned up at him. “That’s a pretty accurate description, then. Pulling you in and never letting you go.”

Dex laughed. “You fucking sap,” he said, and kissed Nursey again.


End file.
